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  • TDS Moderators: AlphaMethylPhenyl | paranoid android

Ritalin Hell. WTF do i do.

Wish I had some good advice for you. All I know is I'm prescribed over the maximum recommended Adderall dose and I do abuse it, Daily, I go 2,3 days without sleep, been calling in to work, my body and mind is deteriorating and Even when I do dose up high and get spun, I'm only there for like 15 minutes and then it's on to the next multi-hour phase of terror, fear, delusions, hearing things, seeing things, fear, sweating all over, regret, sadness, burning stomach. It's really bad and then recently I ran out of my script for the first time and was without for a few days. I woke up on the morning I was out, and oh my god I was hit with a wave of crippling depression like I never knew possible. I also have a binging disorder like you. On top of that hell, I have to work and I have kids, and like the OP said I just watched them live their lives while I was spun in a spiders web of sadness and in-communication, trapped inside a cold bubble of myself as the warm winds blow outside, out of my reach. Worst 3 days of my life since my last withdrawal from a gram a day heroin addiction.

I'm an addict and I've been hospitalized and rehabbed and hooked on every substance possible to get hooked on. To the OP: You are an addict and you need to get together with like-minded and like-damaged souls that know what you're feeling. I'm in and out of AA and NA and although I don't always like everything about it, it's honestly your best bet and only hope. 100% guaranteed you can't do it alone, you're an addict which means you are powerless.

Here I am again as well, another chess game with another substance and the phrase that keeps repeating itself over and over is "The drug ALWAYS wins, I ALWAYS lose" and it's true. I can not control myself. If you really are serious let those people do it for you, that's how it works.

Good luck man, I do feel your pain, I know how bad it is, good for you to be courageous enough to at least try getting clean. I am living in daily terror of the day my supply runs out, or the day my script runs out, it's the same old thing, addiction, the drug takes up every part of our thinking and does nothing for us anymore, Adderall does nothing to help my ADD anymore, it just totally scatters me all over the place. Almost every thought revolves around the substance now, the drug coordinates my lifestyle patterns, the drug is now in total control.

Thanks for this reminder, I gotta work this out.
 
I am an addict. But im so fucking willing to get through this. My day is filled with anxiety over how scattered and brain damaged i feel. I feel not right and everything is so twisted and dark in my head... could this be permanent? i dont even know what the fuck normal is but i know its not this and i know its what i want to get back.
 
I have read that getting over it can take quite some time. This seems to be the rule for the post acute withdrawal syndromes that addicts like us get with almost every addictive substance. I am feeling 100% retarded tonight, I am gobbling down 2 or 3 30mg IR's at a time like candy, like once and hour and not feeling hardly a damn thing at all, that's 180mg in the last 2 hours and I feel nothing except anger and fear and paranoia and depression and all the worst feelings we know .But I can not stop chasing that first high. My chest hurts and I'm pouring sweat. What in the world am I doing? I get no high from these things anymore. I am really fearing having to stop, so I feel your pain. I have to stop too very soon since yesterday and earlier this evening I went into a psychotic rage. I was on the phone screaming at people, I was screaming at my wife, and anybody else that dared to get in my path. I'm turning psycho from this stuff for real. This is not cool.
 
Soap MacTavish said:
I have read that getting over it can take quite some time. This seems to be the rule for the post acute withdrawal syndromes that addicts like us get with almost every addictive substance. I am feeling 100% retarded tonight, I am gobbling down 2 or 3 30mg IR's at a time like candy, like once and hour and not feeling hardly a damn thing at all, that's 180mg in the last 2 hours and I feel nothing except anger and fear and paranoia and depression and all the worst feelings we know .But I can not stop chasing that first high. My chest hurts and I'm pouring sweat. What in the world am I doing? I get no high from these things anymore. I am really fearing having to stop, so I feel your pain. I have to stop too very soon since yesterday and earlier this evening I went into a psychotic rage. I was on the phone screaming at people, I was screaming at my wife, and anybody else that dared to get in my path. I'm turning psycho from this stuff for real. This is not cool.
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Its awful when you think what these drugs can do. At first producing such clarity and focus. From misuse these effects are replaced with the opposite... anxious, paranoid, unable to focus on anything but the mental discomfort these things cause. You need to start making the first steps dude... i've been that bad on high doses of stimulants, and when they arent working.. when you arent feeling good. Simply reducing the dose, eating more, sleeping more... although still not the 'high' you want... it produces less discomfort and increases you're ability to function. I know how scary it is... but make those first baby steps... start cutting out the extra doses you take for the hell of it when you should be winding down at night. Will get the ball rolling.
 
That's the trouble with being an addict, I literally can not stop myself. I chase the high and instead of taking a break like you mentioned, like getting more sleep and lowering the dose, instead I stay up ceaselessly and keep upping the dose. Chasing the high in a futile effort.

Right now I have been up for 3 days, I have eaten decently but I'm so crashed and trashed that I literally almost fell down and collapsed from weakness a minute ago, there are still panic-laced flashes ripping though my tattered mind and my chest still hurts today from my heart pounding. I have these slight auditory and visual hallucinations as well. You know the things from the corner of your eye, wobbles, shadows creeping and moving. And if somebody drops a coin I nearly have cardiac arrest. My back and ribs feel like I been punched because I was so tense my muscles pulled themselves. I can't even make decisions or type right on my keyboard, much less concentrate on anything. For some reason my mind is just completely crashed and just making it on my prescribed dose. Even with my prescribed dose I am having the "warpouts" where it's like I just woke up... but I didn't just wake up... I'm here at the office like usual.

Yeah so at this point, I am seriously going to stop this shit now... I mean, it's not worth it, I literally do not get high or fun or euphoric or anything from these now. Things are officially out of control at my home. My parents attempted a low-key intervention on me. I had been up for almost 3 days at that point and I was full of 300mg or so of adderall over the last 24 hours and I was completely and totally fucking insane. Hallucinating and paranoid and panicked out like a freak. I lost control and went psycho on them, screaming in their faces like I never knew I was capable of.

I'm gonna end this affair with Amphetamines or I'll be one of those guys you read about
 
As an ex Concerta and Ritalin IR script holder, all I can say is that the therapeutic effects of Ritalin very quickly disappear with even minimal abuse. I suspect it has to do with Ritalin having a ceiling effect with it's attention enhancing properties, but no ceiling effect with the amount of paranoia and fear it provides on the comedown.

I made the mistake of plugging more concerta and railing more IRs than would be lethal several times over for someone with no tolerance, and rushing euphoria high doses that affords subtle boosts in focus and motivation in low doses is quick to hide in a higher and higher amount of methylphenidate. At this point plugging 432 mg Concerta provides a moderate lift, but a colossal crash that no other stimulant comes close to. No doubt it becomes hard for anyone to return to a regular regimen with methylphenidate, because regular doses are just paranoia in a pill, with no benefit to ADD symptoms.

What I did was switch to amphetamines (vyvanse, adderall etc), for therapeutic reason only. I'm not sure how susceptible to being rendered moot, the beneficial properties of amphetamines are when subjected to abuse, but I am trying not to find out the hard way.
 
When you get this deep in the shit, don't play fucking pharmacist. Get thyself to the local drug detox unit. Just admit that the damn pills have made you powerless to control your life. (You might hear this last phrase a lot if you're serious about regaining your life, health, and mind.)
 
The effect of abusing amphetamines also rapidly renders the "therapeutic" dose and value of the pill into anxiety and paranoia as well, I can tell you from experience it takes even less then a month to get there and be going though your whole script it 2 weeks or less. Then you will be feeling like a freaked out cranky brain-damaged Satan until you get to your doctors office bug-eyed and electric for that slip of paper, you sit there waiting for your script like a vulture not even hearing a word the doc says with your mouth going on automatic, the brain only senses what it needs to say to acquire the substance which now propels and controls your world, and then your off like Flash to the pharmacy and "no thanks, I'll wait right here for it" as you wait in the chair like a fiend from hell until you get that thing in your hand and suddenly it's Friday in Happyland! Suddenly you're a nice guy who cares about other people. You're a jolly fellow and fun to be around, at least until you run out of your pac-man pellets...

Yeah nice. My doc wants to see me today because she knows I'm outta control abusing my meds and I'm sure she'll switch me to concerta or something. I'm actually almost willing to give it a try since I'm clearly killing myself with this adderall. I know it's only a matter of time until they find me dead on the floor with a death grip on my chest and a half open bottle of adderall in the other with pills strewn around the room and the floor. Ugh, what an ugly terrible sad way to go.
 
my God... I went to my shrink today and even after my wife called and told her I was getting violent and psychotic and was an aggressive a pill popping speed freak not sleeping or eating and that I was a drug addict previously addicted to benzo's and shooting dope in and out of rehabs and all this other ranting.... My shrink still scribed me a Monthly 25mg Adderall XR X 60 (she took me down 5mg from 30) which I went and filled right away. As I left the office I actually pumped my fist in victory. This is because I actually do have an extremely sever case of ADD that has caused many many years of mental anguish because it has gone undiagnosed all this time. Over 30 years, I had no idea it was the root of all my fears and alienation and all the abuse I suffered growing up.

God bless a good shrink who will listen to my side of the damn story. So she knows I was getting a little freeking stupid with this stuff and she's willing to see if I can reign it in and stick to taking as directed. And truthfully that is why i am so happy is because I really want to see if I can do it too and bring my tolerance back down and have improved focus on life.

I know it wont ever go back to the euphoric honeymoon period, I don't expect it too, I just want to be motivated and not drowning my life in numbing agents day and night and binge eating and binge drinking to take the pain of my life-long suffering away.

wish me luck...
 
Hey man thats going to be real hard. When you revert to a low dose you arent going to 'feel' it and you are going to crave continually feeling unsatisfied. If you can fight through this and attain some kind of functionality at a lower dose then power to you. But seriously you should consider atleast a small drug holiday.

My ritalin just doesnt work anymore. Is there anyway after months and months of a high dose... could abstaining for months from it and living cleanly allow me to regain the therapeutic effects of ritalin? I know they say those dont fade.. but in my case they sure have. Im more forgetful and 'scattered' and zoned out on it at a mild dose (40mg a day) then i am on nothing.
 
Personally 40mg of ritalin would knock my socks off in a bad way.

I am currently trying to stabilize on adderall xr 30mg twice daily and I think I know what you mean about getting more scattered from a therapeutic dose. What happens to me is I wake up feeling tired and a little depressed as usual and then I take my therapeutic 30 and now this total weirdness happens. I almost start to nod out and I get a handful of these mini absence seizures, it's sort of like snaping back into reality just before you fall asleep, I mean my mind literally literally loses cosciousness for just a split second and then when I snap back it is jarring. I mean really I am catching myself falling into the nod before I go off the edge but woah. Aside from that I have the typical shaky hands, nerves, and anxiety.

It's strange, it's like my brain receives a smaller dose than usual and has a response it, which is to knock me out and make me sleepy until it gets enough to be up and high, which I can't allow right now.
 
pukingcells said:
Please don't take this the wrong way and I'm not trying to be an asshole, but you are an addict.

All of the feelings you speak of come with addiction; the compulsion, the empty feeling, the replacing of substances, all points to addiction.

It may help you to see and addiction counselor and/or go to an NA meeting.

Just an observation..
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If not an addict they are still problems to work out with a doctor and maybe some additional therapy at the least.

You need help, now just allow yourself to get it and see a good psychiatrist.
 
I fucked up. I ended up back on ritalin 2 weeks ago. At first it worked marginally. And now back to normal even on low doses... what has 3 years of stimulant use done to me. IM so fatigued on ritalin... my mind is so zoned out. I cant focus i just sit down... literally sit. And do nothing. I have extreme pressure in my head.

another thing when i was off ritalin something like a coffee would make me feel so edgy, so nervous, so agitated. Im trying to work out whats happened to my brain after years of exposure to stimulants. It feels like i've burnt out... and my brain cant cope with stimulation. Even if i increase doses of any stimulant... i just feel like shit just burnt out and edgy. It doesn't seem so much like tolerance as it does... just being burnt out. Is there any valid basis to this observation? when i drink i want to sleep, if i take ritalin i get extreme pressure in my head and sit around all day... enjoying nothing, saying fuck all, doing fuck all except weird repetitive tasks. All positive effects from ANYTHING seem to have dissapeared. When im being clean... im lying down tired. always tired always hungry always depressed. I feel backed into a corner here... and unlike other people increasing doses and abusing anything else doesnt offer any kind of escape... it just gives me a different kind of discomfort... although it may be slightly more bareable than being clean because i have a little energy and i dont have to eat every 10 minutes.
 
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